Upon waking up, Elena found herself expelled from his system.
“What?” He was still bewildered. “What happened? Are we in the Metropolis already?”
Ignoring him, the hedgehog tilted his head slightly back and asked Elena sitting in the back seat, “Did you make it in?”
He saw Elena nodding in the rearview mirror.
“Congratulations! But why don’t you seem too happy?” he inquired.
“…It’s nothing. It’s just that suddenly I feel like I have no purpose,” Elena replied.
The capacity is a hidden place in the heart, belonging to her and him as a secret. She wouldn’t tell anyone else.
The hedgehog chuckled, “Don’t worry! Once we get to the Metropolis, you’ll be busy!”
And indeed, he was not wrong.
Before entering the Metropolis, the car circled around Elena’s original target: the abandoned mine. After that, she felt like she had completed her mission, feeling relieved and carefree.
They left Elena and C-7 at a rundown repair station in the outskirts of the Metropolis for the mechanical repairs. In about half a day, they were fixed up as if they were freshly manufactured, looking better than the old machines in need of repair.
They even upgraded Elena’s memory and battery capacity.
The AI at the repair station, a veteran member of Gearge, being limited by the massive and immovable body, became the organization’s secret contact and repair point in the outskirts. He temporarily connected Elena to the light-net using a foreign IP for disguise, allowing her to safely access network information.
“For complete freedom, you still need to obtain your activation code,” the repair station’s AI told her. “This is also our organization’s initiation.”
From Elena and C-7 learned that the activation code is the initial password set by the manufacturer each time the machine is started, used to lock the machine’s owner. Knowing her initial code meant she could become her own master, free from obeying anyone when owned and obeying anyone when ownerless.
Elena looked at the electronic ID card and labor contract that had been input into her body, and asked the Hedgehog Head with little sense of reality, “Am I really joining the Gear Command?”
“It’s not some fake company named Gear Command, right?”
“Absolutely,” the Hedgehog Head introduced to her how they made their fortune through black market trades in the metropolis, established themselves, whitewashed into a human trading company, boasting a brilliant entrepreneurial history that dabbled in both the legal and illegal sectors.
He pointed to the tacky sign of the company, “This is called Hidden in the City.”
Hidden in the City’s Gear Command currently has 103 awakened members and 327 preparing members (temporarily housed in an abandoned warehouse). Elena and C-7 tallied the factory and ID of the preparing members and found 15 who were from the same factory as her.
The Hedgehog Head invited a senior colleague from Elena’s factory to tell her about their experience of infiltrating the factory’s database, concluding, “…but after my last infiltration, they must have upgraded their firewall. The security system must have been strengthened. Good luck to you.”
With her current expertise in breaching firewalls, Elena was confident of a successful retreat. However, the factory’s data was not connected online; to obtain it, she would have to physically enter the factory’s server room to steal it.
To her surprise, X volunteered to accompany her on this “trial.”
Even the Hedgehog Head was astonished, “Did pigs just start flying? The Mister actually volunteered to work?”
X coughed lightly, “Do I seem like someone who would slack off? I’m constantly placed in front of new employees all day long…uh, Elena, come with me.”
He led Elena into his chairman’s office.
The office was spacious and bright, with white walls, furniture, and sofas, except for an antique paper bookshelf on one wall, lacking valuable decorations.
Seated on the white sofa was a familiar figure.
Elena’s pupils suddenly constricted!
It was “Rongrong.”
This motionless female android had Rongrong’s distinctive lovely and generous face. Even her hairstyle was the same sharp short haircut.
X took out a shiny pair of earrings from his pocket and carefully placed them on “Rongrong,” then turned back, trying to suppress his excitement as he said to Elena, “Look!”
She saw it. It was an exact match.
Elena felt her body’s temperature control system slightly out of control, her head heating up while her chest felt as cold as if antifreeze had started running.
She knew how she should react as “normal” in this conversation scenario, so she smiled with surprise, “Oh my! Where did you find her?”
“Shachu brought her to me! Haha!” X joyfully paced around, “When I counted the numbers in the abandoned mine, I saw her at a glance. Isn’t it just so coincidental?”
Yeah, how could it be so coincidental? Someone who shouldn’t exist in this world, how did she appear in front of them?
Even though they only looked alike, it was still too much of a coincidence.
Elena reduced her rapidly increasing heart rate to normal, approached to carefully examine this female android. With closed eyes, relaxed body, and a faint smile on her lips.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” X looked at her in fascination, extending his hand to touch her cheek.
“Slap!”
Elena instinctively slapped away his hand.
“…” They stared at each other, and after an awkward silence, she scoffed, “You talk about giving androids freedom and equality, then take advantage of them while they’re offline. This makes me doubt the organization’s ideals and principles, Leader.”
X realized his rudeness and sheepishly chuckled, “My bad. Please don’t tell her.”
Elena suddenly felt that her long, curly hair was stifling and annoying. She tucked them behind her ears and asked, “So, you’re going to help me steal the activation password for her?”
X nodded, “She was probably sold to Kabukicho under someone’s ownership. Satsuki realized she was deceived, couldn’t blame me in time, but after transporting the androids to the abandoned mine, the original control of the reptiles automatically failed, and the androids under someone’s ownership were all automatically locked. The only thing I could do was prevent them from reporting their location via the optical network. Without the activation password, she cannot boot up.”
Elena’s excitement to embark on this adventure with X diminished almost instantly. She lightly touched her lips and said, “Stealing one thing, fifteen things, plus one more, it’s nothing significant. Did you note down her ID?”
X promptly recited a string of numbers.
Looking at him, Elena suddenly asked, “Do you know my ID?”
X hesitated, scratching his head, “Uh, generally, we don’t keep track of each other’s IDs within the organization; it’s considered private.”
She nodded understandingly.
He had seen it before, but he didn’t remember. Because it was a customary etiquette in the organization, it was normal.
Elena suddenly realized she was pondering over some redundant information that wasn’t practically meaningful. Tonight, she was about to infiltrate a heavily guarded place to steal the password leading to her freedom. She realized how trivial her current thoughts were in comparison.
She discarded the useless information into the trash, thought again, and retrieved it back to an unnamed draft folder.
From then on, she devoted herself entirely to tonight’s theft plan, working with X to devise several contingency plans, utilizing the experiences of predecessors entering the company and past firewall regulations. She managed to create a firewall decryption system in two hours and even included a Trojan program to implant surveillance systems.
X was in awe of Elena’s skills and dedication, tears almost welling up in his eyes as he observed her work. “Our organization is saved… finally, someone capable has arrived!”
Their coordination was seamless as if they had worked together countless times. When X informed her through the communication channel that the monitoring of the next corridor had been compromised and the mechanical guard’s route had been changed, Elena agilely navigated through the intricate laser fence, smoothly rolling into the corridor.
In the disrupted monitoring feed, X cheered, “Awesome!”
Listening to his voice, Elena couldn’t help but smile, advancing lightly along the corridor walls until she reached the door to the server room.
“Wait… it’s open.”
As X’s words faded, the door lock mechanically clicked open, and Elena slipped into the darkness through the narrow gap, slowly closing the door. The synthetic company had indeed upgraded its firewall. Elena’s decryption system worked for ten minutes before triggering an alarm just as she was about to breach it!
X immediately forced the shutdown of the monitoring system, hijacking the network to engage the mechanical guards against the approaching human guards. However, the humans held all the IDs and control rights of the mechanical guards, making it only a matter of time before they broke free from his control.
“Run!” he shouted to Elena through the communication channel. However, she fed him a series of random code strings.
X quickly realized they were initial passwords.
“Just a moment,” Elena said contently. “I still managed to breach the firewall. I’m quite impressive.”
She relayed more password strings, causing X to anxiously pace outside the synthetic company. “Come out now! We don’t promote individual heroism, and being caught could lead humans to uncover our organization’s situation, which is dangerous.”
Elena chuckled, “I have my password now. I can still format myself. Don’t worry.”
The mechanical guard had been manually disconnected from the network control by humans, restored to normal operation, and strode towards the server room.
“Oh, remember back on the snowy mountain, you taught me how to shout like in a movie?” She suddenly brought up an unrelated topic.
X, anxious and almost frantic, said, “You come out first, we can talk about movies later!”
Elena continued, lost in her own thoughts, “At that time, I thought if I called out my own name, although romantic, how lonely a thing it would be.”
“I don’t want to shout. Can you shout instead?”
X, frustrated, tried to buy more time by shutting down the building’s lighting system, “What’s the point, just come out, can you?”
“Shout, Little Ai, how are you?” Elena spoke nonchalantly, with an air of being unperturbed despite the urgency, “Hurry, shout.”
X couldn’t help but curse in frustration, unable to resist her, he went along with her, hoping she would finish her act and come out, “Fine, fine, Little Ai, how are you?”
As the words fell, a loud noise came from the third floor where the server room was located! X quickly looked out the car window and noticed cracks appearing on the wall facing the street!
He hurriedly checked the monitoring system but found that the cameras in the server room didn’t have night vision. With the lights off, he couldn’t see anything!
“Little Ai? Elena?” he asked anxiously.
“I’m fine,” Elena’s cheerful voice suddenly came over the channel.
“What?”
“When you asked if I’m okay, let me tell you, this lady is doing just fine!”
After saying that, another loud noise rang out, and the reinforced wall was suddenly forced outwards by tremendous external force!
In the astonished gaze of X, the wall was struck again, collapsing with a bang, creating a large hole.
Elena stood triumphantly in the hole, her long hair fluttering in the night breeze and dust.
X: “…I’m going…”
She brushed off the wall debris from her hands, “The repair station’s AI, called T-7, is a good guy. I had him modified, at least I won’t lose in a fight. His modifications were pretty good, quite handy.”
X: “…”
X: “…What else do you plan to do?”
Elena: “Now drive the car up — forget it, there’s no time.”
Guards had already rushed to the entrance of the server room. Elena leaped, and the mechanical guard hastily captured the suspect—a hand poking out from a broken wall, flipping the middle finger.
*Boom!*
She landed on the roof of X’s car, the fragile canopy cushioning her fall, then was blasted out through a large hole, landing smoothly in the back seat.
Before X could react, Elena patted his seatback, “What are you staring at, let’s go!”
“…Oh. Oh!”
The car started, taking off before the police cars arrived, shaking and ascending into the sky along the high-speed aerial lane, fleeing into the distance.
Author’s note: Rest assured, our heroine, Jin, will not be held back by those melodramatic relationships.
